Unconventional Motherhood
by BlueVase
Summary: Phyllis and Sister Julienne have a conversation about unconventional motherhood when Phyllis struggles to understand her emotions after Barbara's wedding. TW: none, I think.


**A/N: Thanks for purple-roses-words-and-love for suggesting this idea to me, and being my beta! I discovered during the 5 sentence challenge (I've put all of them together in the piece** _ **fragments**_ **for anyone interested) that I do like to write Phyllis. Turnadette remains my favourite to write, but it is also great to write from a different POV at times. So, here is a piece that delves a bit more into the amazing Phyllis Crane. Hope you guys enjoy!**

Phyllis had known two things from an early age:

Men were necessary creatures, sometimes charming, but almost always vastly overrated;

God was said to be a man, and since believing in men of the flesh and blood kind was not something Phyllis was good at, believing in one she could not touch, smell, or see, was impossible.

"So why are you here?" she whispered to herself as she entered the chapel at Nonnatus House. The air was still, thick with incense and silence. The sun had long since set, but the streetlights outside cast their light through the glass-stained windows, throwing down pools of colour on the worn stone.

Phyllis sat down on one of the wooden chairs, folded her hands, and looked at the wooden cross above the altar. Such a simple symbol to inspire emotions so strong that they could bring empires to their knees.

In a normal situation, the cross would make Phyllis feel faintly uncomfortable. Like men, religion was always just on the periphery of her understanding. There were moments, usually just between waking and sleeping, in which she thought she grasped their meaning. Come morning, though, that understanding would have slipped between her fingers like sand, or water. Phyllis did not like what she did not understand. She was not afraid of it, but it nagged, and made her scowl.

In a normal situation, she would avoid the chapel, avoid the sense of failure it inevitably brought. This was not a normal situation, though.

Today, she had felt like she imagined a mother might feel, and it was glorious and confusing. Phyllis saw herself as a creature of rationality, not of feeling; to be overwhelmed by affection, and pride, and a soft touch of sadness was… "As close as I'll ever get to a religious experience," she whispered, wincing at how far the sound carried. The afterglow of those feelings still pumped through her veins, strengthened every time she thought about her Barbara.

She had looked like a fairy tale princess, her cape as white as snow, her lips as red as blood, and her hair as dark as ebony. She had looked like a saint, with the fur of her hood around her face like a halo, and her smile beatific. She had looked like Phyllis had once dreamed she herself might look, long ago, when she was still a little girl who scowled a lot but harboured a tender heart.

She had thought that this childhood vision might bring her pain, or a sense of resentment, but it brought only happiness; she wanted Barbara to have everything she herself had never had but had always dreamed, and that realisation was not completely new but still unexpected.

"I did not imagine finding you here," Sister Julienne said, and took a place next to Phyllis.

"I'm sorry, Sister, I…"

"No need to apologise, Nurse Crane. God's house is open to everyone, always." Sister Julienne wore her habit and that half-smile that could disarm even the most difficult of patients. The corners of her mouth seemed to be turned up higher than usual, though; they had been ever since Mrs. Turner had given birth to her baby boy.

"Sister Julienne, do you sometimes regret not being a mother?" Phyllis asked. Sister Julienne frowned and her smile faded a little. She was silent for so long that Phyllis thought she must have made some terrible breach of etiquette , and was already mulling over the best way to apologise, when Sister Julienne answered.

"Do you mind terribly if I ask you a question first, and give you my answer once you're done answering?" she asked, her eyes trained on the altar.

"Alright."  
"Do _you_ mind not having any children yourself, Nurse Crane?"

"Not terribly. There were moments… sometimes, it hurt. But then I remembered that I could only have a child if there was a husband to go with that child, and a husband is not a guarantee for a child, and that seemed a terrible risk to take." She briefly thought of words of love and endearment whispered, of tender touches and stolen kisses as planes roared overhead, before pushing the memories away. Those moments were long gone.

"So you never wanted to marry?"

"I fear I don't understand men very well, Sister."  
"On the contrary; I think you understand them too well," Sister Julienne chuckled.

Phyllis didn't tell her that that might very well be the truth, and certainly did not mention that it was not the idea of marriage that she found so frightening, but the idea of being left, of being abandoned like her own mother had been.

"Well, I don't regret the choices I made in my life, if that is what you are really asking. I have travelled the world, learned how to drive a car, made a career for myself; I don't think I could have done half of those things if I had worn a ring on my finger. That doesn't mean I haven't often wished for a… not a different life, per se, but I have wished for a different world, a world in which I could have all of those things as well as a child."

They were silent for a little while as Phyllis fumbled around in her usually so strictly organised mind, tidy like a Rolodex, for the right words. She would not have revealed these feelings and thoughts on an ordinary day, but the realisation that she was not the person she had thought she was had left her raw and in need of a listener.

"Today was one of those moments, but it was different, too. There was a tinge of sadness, but no anger. As I saw Barbara walk down the aisle, I thought that surely the marble saints of the church must have been in awe of her, and that they felt a tiny stab of envy and admiration, because those were the emotions I felt. I felt as if I was a planet and had been knocked out of my usual orbit. What I felt was so strong that it washed away all I would have usually felt. It was monumental and so common at the same time…" Phyllis' voice trailed off, and she wrung her hands, confused and unsure. She knit her brows and shook her head a little, as if getting rid of a bothersome thought. "Well, there you have my answer."

"I always imagined myself as a wife and mother as I grew up," Sister Julienne started slowly, her eyelids slipping down a little as her mind travelled to days long past. "I even knew the man I wanted to marry, and had chosen the style of dress I would wear on my wedding day, and the flowers I would hold in my hand. But then, I got called to do God's work, and everything changed."

Phyllis' eyebrows travelled up in surprise. She had little understanding for a religious calling, and had imagined that Sister Julienne had been born with one, like she herself had been born with a longing for independence. To hear that this was not the case made her view of the world shift a little more.

"That must have been… hard," she said.

"At times. I had God's love to sustain me, though, and that of my fellow sisters. And no road human feet tread is ever without sharp stones, or sudden curves and dips," Sister Julienne said, her familiar smile ghosting around her mouth.

"But do you regret not being a mother?" Phyllis pressed on.

"The Virgin Mary is a mother to us all, even if she has not given birth to us. I strongly believe that I need not have given birth to someone to love them deeply, perhaps even as a mother might, at times," Sister Julienne said slowly.

"I think I have realised the truth of those words today," Phyllis said, blushing a bit at the admission.

"You and Barbara have grown close since you have come to us, haven't you?" Sister Julienne asked, viewing her colleague from the corner of her eye.

"We started out as friends, but now I feel as if we have slipped into a different territory. I know she lost her mother when she was very little, and needed someone to help her do the things a mother usually does on her daughter's wedding day, but I had not expected it to be me. But she did choose me, and now I feel… different," Phyllis finished lamely.

"Does that scare you?" Sister Julienne asked, getting to the heart of the problem with those four simple words.

Phyllis rubbed her mouth and sighed. "A little," she admitted.

 _I can't believe I'm having this conversation with a nun,_ she thought, but before she could retreat behind the thick walls of her mind, Sister Julienne gently took her hand in his and squeezed it.

"I know what you feel," she said, voice soft and gentle.

"You do?"

"Yes. I have experienced those emotions with Shelagh. She too lost her mother when she was a child. Sometimes, our friendship floats into the waters of the maternal, and I feel like I imagine a mother feels."

Phyllis knew there was a deep bond between those two women; she had felt it as soon as she had seen them interact. Deep in her heart, she had also known that she would never become Shelagh's chosen midwife. To hear the young woman choose Sister Julienne had still hurt, though, and Phyllis had cursed her soft heart for making her feel hopeful even if her mind had known such hope was futile. This day, though, so strange and profound, had washed away the hope and hurt and irrational stabs of envy, and left her with understanding and love.

"And does that scare you, those forays in foreign waters?" Phyllis inquired jokingly.

"The strength of those feelings does, sometimes. I love Shelagh and her children fiercely."

"I think I understand. I am afraid that I will come to love Barbara too much," Phyllis said in a low voice.

"If there is one thing my faith has taught me, it is that, once you start giving love, you discover that it is a well without a bottom. It cannot run dry." Sister Julienne stood and smoothed a fold out of her habit. "I am afraid I will have to go and see to Sister Monica Joan. This day has been very tiring for her, and her mind tends to wander a little when she gets tired. Will you join me?"

"If you don't mind, I'd prefer to stay here a little while longer," Phyllis said. "I am not a religious woman, but I do like the solitude of religious houses."  
"It is not solitude you feel, Nurse Crane; it is love, and acceptance."

"I don't know about all of that," Phyllis said truthfully, scowling a little. She had never been a religious person, and even if today had felt like a religious experience, she did not intend to start now.

"But you do; you do not need to be of the Christian faith to understand what love is," Sister Julienne said, smiling and retreating, leaving Phyllis alone with her thoughts and the coloured light and the smell of incense.

"I never thought I'd agree with a nun so much on one day," she whispered. Well, one was never too old to learn, she guessed, and today had been so very instructive.

There were three things she knew now that she was older:

Men remained overrated, though they had their charms and their uses;

God and religion remained strange concepts, to be entertained with caution;

She need not have given birth to a child for it to feel as her own, sometimes.

And even if she wished she had learned the third one when she was younger, she felt no regret. There was only love.


End file.
